


Operation: Protect Tony Stark

by Avengerz



Series: Tumblr Ficlets [9]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Iron Man (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Fluff, Gen, M/M, Oblivious, POV Alternating, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Protectiveness, mother hen!Bucky
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-03
Updated: 2016-08-03
Packaged: 2018-07-29 04:13:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,279
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7669657
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Avengerz/pseuds/Avengerz
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>Sam Wilson has seen a lot of coping mechanisms over the years. He’s seen battle-scarred veterans turn to the bottle, seen grief-stricken wives and mothers throw themselves into charity work, seen traumatized soldiers lock the rest of the world out as they struggle to regain a sense of safety. He’s seen it all, really, both in his time in the Air Force and as a counselor at the VA.</i>
</p>
<p>
  <i>James Buchanan Barnes, though, is something new. After a month of reluctantly-attended therapy and a carefully maintained distance between himself and everyone besides Steve, he’s finally starting to reach out. Steve is elated about it, of course, but Sam’s trained in this kind of thing, and he notices what Bucky’s new coping mechanism is: <b>taking care of Tony Stark.</b></i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	Operation: Protect Tony Stark

**Author's Note:**

  * For [notanightlight](https://archiveofourown.org/users/notanightlight/gifts).



> For a prompt on tumblr: "How about some more Winteriron? Bucky decides that he should focus on new goals as he recovers from the winter soldier program. So, since he has a weakness for cute things and Tony is arguably the cutest of things, he decides he's going to protect Tony. I just want to see Bucky trying to stealthily mother hen Tony and getting more obvious about it!"

“They’re telling me to set goals,” Bucky mutters, and Steve has to suppress a flinch of surprise. Wouldn’t want to swerve off of the road, after all. Bucky _never_ talks about his therapy appointments. Usually Steve can get an idea of how well they went (or didn’t) by how Bucky’s acting but this- this is Bucky opening himself up, talking about his recovery process, and Steve fights to act casual.

“Oh?”

He feels Bucky’s gaze on the side of his head - apparently he wasn’t very successful - before the man goes back to watching the strange-but-familiar New York City streets passing by (agonizingly slowly, in this traffic). “Yeah. Like, steps. In my…recovery.”

“That’s great, Buck!” Steve enthuses. He doesn’t want to push his luck too far, but… “Can you tell me what the first one is?”

“Yeah.” Still, nearly a minute passes in silence as Bucky fiddles with the hem of his sweatshirt and Steve keeps his eyes determinedly trained on the road before the man speaks up again. “I’m s’pposed to spend time with… Other people. Besides you. The rest of the Avengers, maybe.”

Once again, Steve has to struggle to contain his glee. He’d tried to get Bucky to interact with the others in the past, pulling him out of their shared floor to movie nights and their occasional group meal, but Bucky had been so obviously uncomfortable despite everyone’s best efforts to include him that Steve hadn’t tried again. “Well I think we have tentative plans to watch E.T. tonight. You can join us.”

He hears Bucky take a deep breath. “Yeah. Okay.”

* * *

 

Bucky comes in late, late enough that the room is already dark and even though he knows this room full of warriors notice him come in, he can pretend they don’t. He settles in an empty armchair, surprisingly threadbare and wonderfully comfortable. The cushions are deep enough that he can curl into it and feel as if he’s disappearing into them.

He’s not sure if this counts, really, because he doesn’t talk to anyone, doesn’t even really look away from the TV, but the movie is interesting, straight out of the penny novels he and Steve used to read sometimes, and occasionally he smiles at the jokes that Barton is constantly cracking.

He’s so engrossed in the movie, actually, that he doesn’t notice the new person slipping into the room until they try to sit on him. He reacts instinctively to an unknown threat, lashing out with a palm to the solar plexus and a sweeping kick that sends the threat sprawling to the floor. By the time he leaps to his feet, the man is gasping on the floor, rubbing his chest and spitting out strangled curses.

He hears Barton yelp in surprise, sees the Widow jump up from the couch they’re sharing, but all of his focus is trained on his attacker. “What the hell,” the man groans. “Since when does my chair have a defense mechanism? I didn’t program that.” He pauses. “Did I?”

“No,” that’s Steve, stepping in front of a bemused Bucky and offering a hand to the man. “I’m sorry Tony, I guess you startled Bucky.”

“He startled me!” ‘Tony’ says defensively as he gets to his feet. Bucky recognizes him, now, from the brief encounter when he moved into the tower a month ago. Stark had been on his way to a meeting, but he’d flashed a glance up and down Bucky, turned to Steve’s pleading eyes, and sighed deeply. “Fine,” he’d said at the time, with a hard look at Bucky. “If he murders me in my sleep, though, that’s on you.” And now Bucky’s just attacked him.

When Stark turns to Bucky, though, it’s with a wry smile. “No hard feelings though, Barnes. I’d be pretty upset if someone tried to sit on me, too. Sorry, I didn’t see you lurking there.”

Bucky hesitates, his instincts still screaming at him to fight, to protect, to _kill_. He nods, jerkily, and slowly sits down again.

“C’mere,” he hears Steve murmur to Stark. “There’s an open seat next to me.” And then, quiet under the sound of the movie starting up again, “are you okay? Your chest…”

Bucky glances over to see Stark still rubbing at his sternum as he sits down next to Steve on the couch. “I’m fine, Steve.” Steve looks clearly skeptical, and Bucky feels a foreign flash of guilt.

He frowns and looks down at his hands. He hadn’t meant to hurt the man who’s providing him a home. He’ll keep an eye on Stark, Bucky decides, make sure he’s alright.

Mind made up, Bucky leans back into the chair and returns his attention to the movie. For some reason, though, he can’t stop himself from glancing at Stark every few minutes. He sees the way Stark’s blinking slows, how he slumps further and further into the couch, until he’s snoring softly against Steve’s shoulder. Bucky doesn’t say anything, doesn’t point out the man’s obvious exhaustion to the rest of the Avengers, but he notices.

* * *

 

“I brought you lunch.”

“Oh my god!” Tony fumbles with the welding torch and spares a thought to be thankful that JARVIS had persuaded him to wear safety gloves before he finally manages to put the torch to the side. Then he pushes up his safety goggles and turns to glare at Barnes, who is holding a tray and looking vaguely guilty - _as well he should_. “I swear, I need to fit you with a bell. And Natasha. And Steve, probably, that guy is surprisingly light on his feet.”

Barnes just stares at him, expression blank but something like amusement in his eyes, and Tony trails off with a sigh. “Did Steve send you down? It’s not his cooking, is it? Someone’s got to tell that man that this isn’t the Great Depression, he doesn’t need to put so much salt on everything, it’s already edible-”

“No,” Barnes interrupts, and it’s so uncharacteristic of the brooding man Tony’s only occasionally glimpsed over the last month that he blinks. “No, Stevie didn’t send me.”

“Oh.” Tony frowns. “Bruce, then? He’s a good cook, at least.”

“No, I, um,” Barnes shuffles his feet, looks away, and Tony marvels at the fact that this man used to be Hydra’s greatest weapon. He’d been more than a little worried to have the Winter Soldier under his roof, concerns only multiplied when the man attacked him on movie night (though Tony could admit that it was mostly his fault.) This man, though, who fidgets and avoids Tony’s gaze, isn’t the Winter Soldier. This is James Barnes, or something close to it.

“I made it,” Barnes blurts out finally, and Tony blinks, pulled from his reverie. He stares, uncomprehending, at Barnes, and the man nods down at the tray he’s holding. “It’s grilled cheese, nothin’ too fancy, but you didn’t come to dinner last night and I didn’t see you getting breakfast either and Stevie told me you don’t have a kitchen down here, so I thought maybe you were gettin’ hungry, so I got an apple too, and some of those chips JARVIS says you like-”

“You made me lunch?” Tony interrupts, still shocked.

Slowly, Bucky nods.

Tony eyes the tray for a moment. His first instinct is to decline it. He has no interest in being poisoned today, and besides, he’s not a huge fan of people acting like he’s incapable of taking care of himself. But if JARVIS had been supervising the food-making process he probably would have caught Barnes slipping any poisons into the sandwich, and besides, Tony’s stash of protein bars and blueberries had run out sometime around two AM, and he really _had_ forgotten to grab some breakfast, and he _is_ hungry, so maybe he does need someone to bring him food, every once in awhile. “Alright,” he says finally. “Go ahead and set it down. Let’s see if your Great Depression cooking skills are any better than Steve’s.”

They are. Tony scarfs down the sandwich, and from the corner of his eye he thinks he sees a small smile cross Barnes’ face.

* * *

 

Sam Wilson has seen a lot of coping mechanisms over the years. He’s seen battle-scarred veterans turn to the bottle, seen grief-stricken wives and mothers throw themselves into charity work, seen traumatized soldiers lock the rest of the world out as they struggle to regain a sense of safety. He’s seen it all, really, both in his time in the Air Force and as a counselor at the VA.

James Buchanan Barnes, though, is something new. After a month of reluctantly-attended therapy and a carefully maintained distance between himself and everyone besides Steve, he’s finally starting to reach out. Steve is elated about it, of course, but Sam’s trained in this kind of thing, and he notices what Bucky’s new coping mechanism is: taking care of Tony Stark.

No one else seems to realize it, save perhaps Natasha. Tony himself doesn’t even notice, even as Bucky continues to bring him food whenever he misses a meal, persuades him to go to bed in the midst of a science binge, commandeers the love seat for the two of them during movie night.

He notices, and he doesn’t say anything, because of all the coping mechanisms he’s seen, this one seems to be the most healthy. Sure, sam’s a little concerned about codependency, but Stark needs someone looking out for him just as much as Bucky needs to look after someone. It works for them, and neither of them even seem to realize it.

* * *

 

It comes to a head during a battle. Just a small-time villain, this time, a disgruntled former employee who happened to be a mutant. Usually it would be the X-Men’s jurisdiction, but most of their force is detained somewhere in the Midwest in yet another clash against the Brotherhood, so the Avengers agreed to shut him down.

The whole team doesn’t even come, just Steve, Natasha, Tony on air support and Bruce standing by, just in case. Barnes is there, though, more as a test than anything else. He wants to get back into the field, make some reparations for all the years he spent as the villain, and Steve decides that if he can handle a simple battle like this, they might be able to bring him to larger confrontations.

Everything goes fine, at first. Steve makes sure the civilians are safe while Natasha goes after the telekinetic herself. He’s untrained, she can tell, without the finesse of a truly talented mutant, but he can swing cars around pretty well. Natasha ducks a sedan and sprints towards where the man is holed up behind a barrier of stacked detritus. She spots him through a gap between a light pole and another minivan, a portly man that’s flushed with exertion but clearly still infuriated. She doesn’t shoot, though she could; Xavier’s asked them to take the man in alive, if possible. Barnes is on a nearby roof, though, and Natasha knows he’ll take the shot, if necessary.

Iron Man swoops over the street. “Widow, there’s a few more civilians trapped in the coffee shop behind him. He hasn’t noticed them yet, I think, but keep an eye out for-” Tony cuts off with a grunt and the sound of metal screeching, and Natasha spins to watch in horror as the armor falls from the sky, a semi truck falling with it.

The armor hits the ground with concrete-shattering force, and the giant truck crashes down right on top of it. “Stark!” she hears herself calling out, but it’s nothing compared to the terrified, “ _TONY_!” ringing from Barnes’ comm.

“Iron Man, come in,” That’s Steve, desperate, and she sees him running towards the crater where Tony’s laying. Natasha hesitates for a split moment, but she’s further away, and the mutant is still swinging cars around with wild abandon. _The mission always comes first._

It’s a matter of moments to scale the man’s barrier and take him into custody with the special handcuffs Xavier had provided them with, but by the time she’s dragged the man out onto the street, she can see Steve and Barnes working to shove the semi off of Tony. Finally, with another screech, it falls to the side, and she watches Barnes collapse to his knees next to the armor.

“Tony,” he’s left his comm on, probably forgot all about it, “Tony, please, talk to me, oh god, Tony-” There’s the grinding of gears for a brief moment as Barnes pulls off the face mask, and a clang as he throws it to the side. “Tony, _please_.”

Natasha’s close enough now to see Stark’s eyes flutter open. He’s bruised, and a thin stream of blood drips from a cut near his hairline, but he smiles up at Barnes widely. “Hey, James. Sorry, my communications system shut down for a bit, gotta fix that-”

“Oh my god,” Barnes crumples over the armor, presses his forehead to the glow of the arc reactor, and Natasha has to look away as she hands the perp over to the authorities. “Don’t ever scare me like that again, punk, I thought you were _dead_ -”

“Hey,” Tony says gently, and Natasha glances back to see him detach the gauntlet and run careful fingers through Barnes’ hair. “I’m okay, James. I’m fine.”

“And you better stay that way, punk,” Barnes says, gruff, but Tony just huffs out a laugh.

“I’ve got you to watch out for me, right?” Barnes pulls back to stare at him, and Tony’s smile gentles. “I’ll be just fine. We both will be.” Slowly, Barnes nods. Natasha smiles and looks away.

**Author's Note:**

> You can find me obsessing over Tony Stark at [my tumblr!](http://anthonyfuckingstark.tumblr.com)
> 
> As always, comments are adored and read over and over again.


End file.
